How to Clean Up Your Resume in Ten Simple Steps

Your resume is the first impression that a potential employer gets of you. In order to stand out from the crowd, it is essential that your resume is polished and professional. Here are ten simple steps to clean up your resume:

1. Ditch the funky fonts.

Using hard-to-read fonts is a fast way to get your resume on the bottom of any HR manager’s stack. Stick to something simple, like Helvetica or even Times New Roman. It’s crucial to use fonts that everyone has as emailing a resume becomes a common practice.

2. Put your skills up front.

Most employers care more about your skills than anything else. Putting your skills right below your name lets you convince a hiring manager right off the bat. As long as you’ve got the appropriate skills and certifications listed for a job, you’ll at least make it past the initial resume review.

3. Proofread past spell check.

Just about everyone runs a spell check on their resume. But so many typos can’t be caught by a computer: misused words, misspelled business names — I’ve even seen a resume with the applicant’s name misspelled! You should read over your documents twice and if possible, ask a friend to read over your resume too.

4. Make everything match.

If you’re sending references and a cover letter along with your resume, make them match. Print them all on the same kind of paper, use the same fonts, and make your writing sound consistent. You’ll present a more professional front.

5. Minimize your job descriptions.

Your title should say most of what you want to say. If your job title was ‘accountant,’ a hiring manager can generally figure out what you did. Try to limit job descriptions and make it short.

6. Put dates at the end.

Move those dates to the end of the sentence instead, and put the important stuff at the front. Prospective employers don’t always care about the dates you worked.

7. Don’t leave big gaps in your timeline.

List your volunteer work, time spent taking care of an elderly relative — anything you did during that time that could be construed as work. Many HR managers assume that there’s always a significant reason for someone to leave the workforce and they rarely assume anything positive, so it’s better to fill those gaps.

8. Keep religious information out of it.

Don’t list anything that could be the basis of discrimination. The same goes for including a headshot for any job opportunity that doesn’t actually require it.

9. Align everything.

No matter what you layout your resume in, you can generally make the alignment pretty simple. Jagged lines of text look unprofessional and make most resume reviewers more than happy to move on to the next one.

10. Adhere to your industry’s conventions.

Your industry may have a specific style of resume or CV that has become the norm. Try to stick with those conventions. If a prospective employer is looking for an employee in your industry, they’ll be looking for a resume in the conventional style, containing conventional certifications and terminology to prove that you are familiar with the field.

Having a polished resume improves your chances of making it through various stages of the application process. If a hiring manager gets a high volume of resumes in response to a job listing, they may use small problems such as grammatical errors, typos, or bad formatting as a way to cut the number of prospects. Thus, it’s essential to put your best foot forward with a clean, polished, and professional-looking resume.